Computer Crime and Cyber-Terrorism - Essay Example

The paper “Computer Crime and Cyber-Terrorism” seeks to evaluate online crime, which has now become a multi-billion dollar business. Hackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in the means they use to get users to disclose confidential financial and personal information…

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Yet another dangerous result of the developments in technology and the availability of the Internet has occurred in the field of cyberterrorism, offering terrorists an expanded platform from which to propagate their ideas and launch their attacks (www.ntrg.cs.tcd.ie).
Online crime has now become a multi-billion dollar business. Hackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in the means they use to get users to disclose confidential financial and personal information, which is then misused. According to an expert in online risk management, the world of computer security is increasingly under threat because users leave large online footprints.(Lush, 2007). Online crime may be of three types – phishing, malware, and corporate attacks.
Phishing is the practice of sending emails with links that direct users to websites where they unwittingly disclose confidential data or expose their systems to malicious software. It is mainly financial institutions that are targeted through such methods, with the number of such websites being estimated at 55,000 in April 2007 (Lush, 2007). Malware and corporate attacks may destroy or steal confidential business and customer data or may convert a computer system into a “bot”, whereby it is controlled by someone else who gains access to all the sensitive information that is present on the computer. Banks are most often the targets of online crimes. In a recent study conducted at the University of Berkeley, the Bank of America was found to be the largest target of identity theft, followed by other banks such as HSBC and Washington Mutual (Seltzer, 2008).
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The dependence on IT networks is a defining feature of most industries in today’s world. The corporate sector, the banking and financial sector, the marketing sector and even the entertainment industry are all globally integrated via the internet. The global internet, in recent times forms the backbone of business and knowledge sourcing, sales and marketing, banking and finance, strategy management and many more systems.

The emergence and widespread use of the Internet globally has made this medium vulnerable to various threats and acts of violations of both personal and organizational privacy and security. Termed as cyber terrorism, the definition of which was revealed to have spurred difficulties in taxonomies, its meaning is hereby quoted by Gordon as: “Cyber terrorism is the convergence of terrorism and cyberspace.

3.5m. The article involved Weatherhead and his three co-conspirators, Ashley Rhodes, 28, of south London, Peter Gibson, 24, of Hartlepool, and an 18-year-old from Chester where they carried out an online attack at PayPal using distributed denial of services (DDoS).

Fraud activities have in the recent times increased as many people are desperate and are engaging themselves in crime as they try to make ends meet and hence participating in the acts of fraud in their work places and other institutions. Fraud-fighting actions can be categorized into three main groups: prevention, detection and investigation.

Criminals use computers to facilitate the embezzlement of money and properties; theft of confidential records; and alteration and destruction of valuable files. The misuse of the computer may involve the falsification of computer signatures through

e” and “data privacy.” The author does this by providing detailed information concerning the internet and the role that the internet plays in the current economies. Further, the author gives this explanation by depicting threats that come as a result of cyber crime. These